


There Before

by joisbishmyoga



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, everything is spoilers, spoilers for November, spoilers for december, velvet room, well at least it's all hinted spoilers instead of blatant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-11-10 10:43:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11125467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisbishmyoga/pseuds/joisbishmyoga
Summary: Akechi had seen the little Shadow-cognition girl before, once, but he'd been in a hurry and had barely noticed the barred door next to her, its blue glow lost in the palette of Okumura's Palace.  It now stood in blazing contrast to the blood-red gloom of Mementos, though, and this time Akechi could see how the door stood freely across... some sort of bluescreened hole in reality?  Or whatever passed for reality in Mementos.





	There Before

**Author's Note:**

> Junsa: lowest police rank, "officer"

Mementos' entrance had changed.  
  
Akechi had seen the little Shadow-cognition girl before, once, but he'd been in a hurry and had barely noticed the barred door next to her, its blue glow lost in the palette of Okumura's Palace.  It now stood in blazing contrast to the blood-red gloom of Mementos, though, and this time Akechi could see how the door stood freely across... some sort of bluescreened hole in reality?  Or whatever passed for reality in Mementos.  
  
And then Joker murmured "I need a minute," walked right up to the child, and vanished through the hole without so much as a glance from the rest of the team.  
  
"Does he... do this often?" Akechi asked, not entirely sure who he was addressing but good lord what was that hole and shouldn't they have given him some warning?!  
  
"Hm?  Oh, stand over there and meditate?" Queen said, under a vague chorus of unconcerned agreement from the others.  "Quite often, yes.  Both here and at each Palace.  He comes out of it with new Personas, though... we did mention his power to carry several?... so it's best just to stand guard and wait it out."  
  
"... Stand over there?" Akechi echoed.  
  
Queen blinked.  "Yes...?" as if she hadn't noticed how odd that part of her statement was.  "Don't bother trying to shake him out of it, he's completely unresponsive."  
  
What.  "... Queen.  Are you..." She couldn't be trying to pull a prank on him.  It was entirely too stupid, pretending Joker was standing there when he quite obviously _wasn't._   So the other option... well, this _was_ a cognitive world.  "Are you telling me that you think Joker is still present?"  
  
Her eyes widened behind her heavy iron mask.  "Are you saying he's not?"  
  
They would clearly be of no help.  He turned away sharply, uncaring of whether it looked dismissive -- Goro Akechi was occasionally rude, poor little sweetheart, he tried so hard, it'd be fine -- and strode across to the cage door and its bored guard.  Bending slightly over the little girl, Akechi gave her his best media smile.  "Excuse me, junsa-chan."  
  
Slowly, her clipboard stopped spinning.  She dragged her eyes up... no, just one, one lone unnatural Shadow-yellow eye, wide with surprise in an otherwise doll-somber face.  "... How curious," she finally murmured.  
  
"That I can see through your illusion?" Akechi asked.  Best media smile, oh so innocent, goodness did I make a cutting remark, how socially inept of me.  Not that he was sure what would be a cutting remark to this... being.  There was something there, he could tell, but it wasn't a Shadow he could touch, nor the empty fragile shell of a cognitive person.  What _was_ she?  
  
"Mm, that as well."  She eyed him consideringly.  "Perception is not always beneficial, in a cognitive world," she warned him.  
  
Better than being blind little lambs, like Joker's team.  "Where's Joker?"  
  
Silence.  But... it was a thoughtful silence, the weight of her consideration draping over Akechi like a weighted blanket, increasingly heavy as long moments passed.  
  
"I am Justine," she finally said.  "My master has not given you permission to enter."  (A clue, another entity.)  A faint hint of real emotion passed across her face.  "But neither has he denied it."  The clipboard clicked against the snaps on her pocket as she tucked it under her arm.  "Come with me."  
  
"Be right ba--" he started to call over his shoulder, only for the words to die when he saw no one looking their way at all, back in their unconcerned standing-guard positions.  Had they... not seen him conversing with what they saw as thin air?  Forgotten what he'd said...?  
  
 _Turned their backs on me and refused to see_ \--  
  
Thinking of that would be counterproductive.  Particularly if he was, as he very strongly suspected, walking into a trap.  A trap Joker was already ensnared in...  
  
Hopefully Akechi wouldn't have to call on Loki to get out of it.  That would ruin everything.  
  
The corridor behind the barred door was a deep blue, a couple of shades more vibrant than any of Justine's clothing, and seemed little more than a surface under his feet and the occasional shadow from unseen, square-linked chains somewhere in the depths of the color.  A second barred gate shone pale up ahead, but Justine turned sharply just a couple of steps before they reached it, and Akechi stepped out of that fathomless world onto stone.  
  
It took his eyes a moment to adjust.  He stood in a vaulted, far more natural-looking corridor of stone that faded to a deep, cool gray once he'd blinked the contrast-to-blue from his vision.  The corridor curved sharply away from him to his right: he could see two more of those barred doors, one along the inner curve and one on the outer, now very obviously prison cell doors.  
  
He should've known from Justine's police uniform.  
  
At the thought, he noticed she'd vanished.  
  
"Do you wish to perform an execution?" Justine murmured behind him.  
  
Akechi spun, only to see...not Justine, but a stream of light that cut brokenly across the corridor, outlining the shadows of human figures.  One tall, two... not.  
  
"Now choose!" a second child snapped.  This time Akechi could tell, the voices came from perhaps three meters inside the cell.  
  
Joker hummed thoughtfully, and a glassy, brittle sound rang through the small space.  
  
"Not terrible," Justine murmured, "but not impressive."  
  
Akechi could almost see Joker shrug.  Then the second child said, "Choose the inherited skills, inmate!"  
  
More of the odd, brittle sounds, these deeper, almost identical to the toy ray gun Akechi'd owned when he was five.  Then...  
  
It was old, and deep, and very, darkly powerful.  "It will recieve considerable power," the entity said.  
  
"Go ahead," Joker ordered.  
  
Go ahead with... Justine had said an _execution_...?  
  
Stepping close to the wall, Akechi carefully slid the beak of his ridiculous mask around the corner of the cell, angling it to keep the tip close to the stone as possible as he peered inside.  
  
There stood Kurusu, his back to him, leaning against the door at the far end of the cell scarcely two and a half meters from Akechi.  He wore a dirty, ragged prison uniform straight out of old American Westerns and cartoons; his wrists, up where he gripped the bars of his cell, were weighed down with iron manacles and more of the square-linked chains.  And past him...  
  
... past him...  
  
Justine and another, nearly-identical little girl, were wrestling a pair of Kurusu's Personae to their knees behind a set of guillotines.  Once subdued, they threw indigo sheets over them, cocooning and chaining them down, then locked their necks under the blades.  
  
And Kurusu just stood there, humming some formless melody under his breath, _watching_.  
  
Akechi swallowed.  Surely he wouldn't... surely this foolish, self-righteous, oh-so-kind-and-sincere...  
  
With a metallic screech and a shower of sparks, the blades fell.  Streamers of Shadow burst from the guillotines, the lopped-off heads vanishing before they hit the floor, and spun into a globe before Kurusu.  Then it collapsed into a hovering old woman with wild lavender hair.  
  
Joker laughed in pure delight.  
  
How.  
  
How could.  
  
But.  
  
Akechi collapsed against the wall, letting it take most of his weight as he stared sightlessly up towards the darkened ceiling.  His heart thudded under his hand, pounding in his dry throat, and his pants felt just the slightest bit too tight.  
  
 _He executes Shadows too._  
  
 _Not just... as a fair, life-or-death fight.  He_ executes _them._  
  
And he wasn't stopping.  
  
"You okay with this?" the other girl, the brash one, asked.  Then, "Choose the inherited skills."  
  
"It will recieve considerable power," the entity repeated.  "Now for a rebirth."  
  
And the guillotines screeched again.  
  
Akechi bit his lip.    
  
That laugh came again, thrumming through Akechi almost as if the very stones were ringing with it.  His pants were definitely too tight now.  Joker... Joker was watching Shadows die.  Brutually.  Viscerally.  _Delightedly_.  
  
And then a _third_ time, and this time when the guillotines screamed, something reached deep into Akechi's core and stroked heat right into his heart.  
  
He came with his throat clamping down on the cry.  
  
It took several minutes for Akechi to realize the stone against his back was gone, and that he was carrying his weight on his own two feet.  And that his underwear was perfectly dry.  Slowly, dazedly, he opened his eyes.  
  
He was back in Mementos, his vision fading to violet on his left from the glow of the cell door.  
  
Justine, standing before him, met his gaze evenly.  "It seems fusing from the Arcana of a human confidante within the room has... interesting effects on the confidante.  My apologies for any discomfort."  
  
Best-media-smile covered it up as Akechi cast about for an answer.  Although... actually, "What's a confi--"  
  
The door swung open, nearly hitting Akechi.  It would've if he hadn't instinctively flinched out of the path.  A second flinch had him sidestep Joker as the man materialized out of clinging blue mists.  
  
"Ah."  Cover, distract, he hadn't been standing right in front of the door talking to Justine.  "Kuru-- Joker.  You're--" _back_ "-- awake.  Are we going to head downstairs now?"  
  
That got him an unruffled nod, as if the man hadn't been murdering his own Personae just seconds prior.  "Let's go."  
  
Akechi fell into step with the rest of the team in Joker's wake, and hoped that the heat burning under his mask would go unnoticed in the bloody gloom of Mementos.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> My brain was singing just two lines on repeat the ENTIRE TIME I was writing. "There's something sweet, and almost kind, in his facade that drove me nuts but it's a liiiie!" Working title was "Disney Princess Akechi", I stg.


End file.
